‘Our ordeal as VVF patients’

Blessing’s one and only prayer as she was being taken to the theatre for a Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) surgery at the Family Life Center and Maternal Birth-Injury/VVF Hospital in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, was not to come out alive.  Her prayer was also the same as that of her blood sister and […]

Blessing’s one and only prayer as she was being taken to the theatre for a Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) surgery at the Family Life Center and Maternal Birth-Injury/VVF Hospital in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, was not to come out alive. 

Her prayer was also the same as that of her blood sister and other family members whose supplication was that she (Blessing) would be pronounced dead so that everyone would be rid of her and she too would happily rest in peace.

However, Blessing (second name withheld), who is in her mid 20s had a successful operation and came out alive.She wasn’t pleased with the outcome initially, she said, but she hadn’t the courage to take her own life. 

That was the experience of Blessing, a VVF patient who had her surgery last year at the center but could not return home because her family members have abandoned her and she had nowhere to go to.

Narrating her ordeal to our correspondent who visited her at the center, she said she was not married yet, adding that the person that impregnated her before she had the problem had no capacity to take  care of her and so he too had abandoned her.

“I was left on my own, rejected by everyone and I couldn’t help myself. I started hating myself because of my condition and I was even smelling to myself and just felt I should disappear from the face of the earth.

“One of our kind hearted church members who saw my condition decided to bring me to the VVF center here. That gave me a little hope, but not so much since I have already lost hope and belief in myself. On the day I was being taking to the theatre for surgery, I decided to call my sister to tell her and she barked at me. She said God punish me for calling her number and that even if I die or live it’s none of her business and told me never to call her again.”

She said she gave the phone back to the nurses and wept and prayed that she never came out of the theater alive. 

“At that point I lost the desire to live. The hospital matron tried to console me and said I wouldn’t die at the center by God’s grace. But I was beyond consoling then. Much to my disappointment however, the surgery was successful and I came out alive,” she said.

Blessing said she would remain at the center for now because she was enjoying the love shown her by the management. 

VVF is an abnormal fistulous tract extending between the bladder and the vagina which allows the continuous involuntary discharge of urine, and often have a profound effect on the patient’s emotional well-being.

VVF is a medical disorder with a serious social problem and has dehumanising impact which often makes the patients, like Blessing, to lose the desire to keep on living.

Another patient, Dorathy, said she has been at the center since September last year after she developed VVF and got operated upon.

She said she took in for a boy who promised to marry her, but that upon her delivery of a baby boy who later died and the VVF which set in, the boy said he would not marry her any longer.

According to Dorothy, she was abandoned by most people in her life when the problem began and so no other enjoyment of life could appeal to her and hence lost interest in everything.

“After my surgery I went back home. Then the boy who impregnated me started coming around and want to trick me to bed again. I resisted him because I knew what I went through, and I am yet to be whole,” she said.

She added that she went back to the centre and enrolled in their skills acquisition programme for VVF patients.  She is almost done with her training in fashion and design, and would remain at the centre for now. 

In her own account, another victim, Juliana, said she had VVF since 2014 and had already undergone three surgeries and now waiting for her body to be strong before having the fourth one.

She said when she became pregnant, she had complications and was taken to five hospitals and then to the Teaching Hospital in Calabar  where she was referred to the center when they found she had VVF.

“Neither me nor my mother initially knew about it. When I started seeing water I thought it was normal because I was told that when someone gives birth water will be coming out from the person’s body. But the doctor thereafter came and told me that the water is not normal and that I have VVF,” she said.

She said at the initial stages she could not eat or walk by herself and was carried around with the help of her mother who also helped to clean her up all the time.

Her brother, she said, was the one buying all her drugs and taking care of her other bills and that if not for his efforts and that of her mother she would have since given up on life.

The matron in charge of the center, Rev. Sister. Sylvia Ndubuaku said VVF cases are uniquely and discreetly treated because the patients  were often traumatised physically, socially, economically and otherwise, adding that it affects the totality of the woman and takes away her dignity.  

She said the center is managed by the Medical Missionaries of Mary (Catholic Church) and that it was established in 1937 by Late Rev Sister Ann Ward from Ireland. It is the oldest VVF center in sub-saharan Africa and the only one in the region.

She said the problem faced by the patients is that some of them were called witches whenever they develop VVF and were abandoned by their families to die.

According to her, the problem is often prevalent among the poor who could not get good medical attention during pregnancy and delivery, and therefore would just want to die whenever they develop the problem since they have lost belief in themselves.

Sr. Ndubuaku said the center is being funded by free-will donations from overseas, charitable organizations and good spirited individuals/groups, pointing out that some of the nurses running the center are from the Akwa Ibom State civil service and often shuttle between the center and their place of primary assignment.

She said they have never enjoyed any funding from the federal government and that it is ExxonMobil (Nigeria) that helps to pay one quarter of their staff salaries while the remaining three quarter is by the Catholic congregation.

With respect to treatment of patients and medical charges she said: “We do run camp for our patients and we treat them in batches. The last batch was the January batch and they were 67 patients. We have treated and discharged  them just last week. The next batch will be in from April 23. The next group will be in August while the last for the year will be in October. We admit them for at most two months, treat them and discharge them and then prepare for another group. Approximately, we take 200 patients in a year.”

She said a professor at the VVF centre Abakaliki  and another  VVF surgeon in Envangelist Hospital Jos often come to work with two of their doctors. 

“VVF surgery is an expensive one but we do not charge the women. If we do you would not see one patient here. Some private hospitals charge as much N200,000- N250,000 and the women cannot afford it. But here the surgery, feeding and medication is free. The only thing the patients do is that they pay for the medical tests which is not often more than N2000 – N3000,” she said.

She stressed that unlike the belief that the only cause of VVF is early marriage, there are several other causes (in the South) resulting from the belief system that a woman must deliver at home on her own or with a traditional birth attendant, and some prophets in churches who tell women that they must deliver on their own (without going to the hospital) like the Hebrew women in the Bible.

Some mothers-in-laws she added, compound the problem by calling their daughters-in-law weak if they cannot deliver on their own, saying they delivered their sons (now the women’s husbands) on their own.

She called on the federal government to support the center in any way it can and also the Akwa-Ibom State government to deepen its commitment, saying that with government support the center can reach out to more women with VVF and help to bring the menace to the barest minimum.